Destroyers at Jutland

Rudyard Kipling

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Chapter 1

Stories of the Battle

THERE was much destroyer-work in the Battle of Jutland. The actual battle field may not have been more than twenty
thousand square miles, but the incidental patrols, from first to last, must have covered many times that area.
Doubtless the next generation will comb out every detail of it. All we need remember is there were many squadrons of
battleships and cruisers engaged over the face of the North Sea, and that they were accompanied in their dread comings
and goings by multitudes of destroyers, who attacked the enemy both by day and by night from the afternoon of May 31 to
the morning of June 1, 1916. We are too close to the gigantic canvas to take in the meaning of the picture; our
children stepping backward through the years may get the true perspective and proportions.

To recapitulate what every one knows.

The German fleet came out of its North Sea ports, scouting ships ahead; then destroyers, cruisers, battle-cruisers,
and, last, the main battle fleet in the rear. It moved north, parallel with the coast of stolen Schleswig-Holstein and
Jutland. Our fleets were already out; the main battle fleet (Admiral Jellicoe) sweeping down from the north, and our
battle-cruiser fleet (Admiral Beatty) feeling for the enemy. Our scouts came in contact with the enemy on the afternoon
of May 31 about 100 miles off the Jutland coast, steering north-west. They satisfied themselves he was in strength, and
reported accordingly to our battle-cruiser fleet, which engaged the enemy’s battle-cruisers at about half-past three
o’clock. The enemy steered south-east to rejoin their own fleet, which was coming up from that quarter. We fought him
on a parallel course as he ran for more than an hour.

Then his battle-fleet came in sight, and Beatty’s fleet went about and steered north-west in order to retire on our
battle-fleet, which was hurrying down from the north. We returned fighting very much over the same waters as we had
used in our slant south. The enemy up till now had lain to the eastward of us, whereby he had the advantage in that
thick weather of seeing our hulls clear against the afternoon light, while he himself worked in the mists. We then
steered a little to the north-west bearing him off towards the east till at six o’clock Beatty had headed the enemy’s
leading ships and our main battle-fleet came in sight from the north. The enemy broke back in a loop, first eastward,
then south, then south-west as our fleet edged him off from the land, and our main battle-fleet, coming up behind them,
followed in their wake. Thus for a while we had the enemy to westward of us, where he made a better mark; but the day
was closing and the weather thickened, and the enemy wanted to get away. At a quarter past eight the enemy, still
heading south-west, was covered by his destroyers in a great screen of grey smoke, and he got away.

Night and Morning

As darkness fell, our fleets lay between the enemy and his home ports. During the night our heavy ships, keeping
well clear of possible mine-fields, swept down south to south and west of the Horns Reef, so that they might pick him
up in the morning. When morning came our main fleet could find no trace of the enemy to the southward, but our
destroyer-flotillas further north had been very busy with enemy ships, apparently running for the Horns Reef Channel.
It looks, then, as if when we lost sight of the enemy in the smoke screen and the darkness he had changed course and
broken for home astern our main fleets. And whether that was a sound manœuvre or otherwise, he and the still flows of
the North Sea alone can tell.

But how is a layman to give any coherent account of an affair where a whole country’s coast-line was background to
battle covering geographical degrees? The records give an impression of illimitable grey waters, nicked on their
uncertain horizons with the smudge and blur of ships sparkling with fury against ships hidden under the curve of the
world. One sees these distances maddeningly obscured by walking mists and weak fogs, or wiped out by layers of funnel
and gun smoke, and realises how, at the pace the ships were going, anything might be stumbled upon in the haze or
charge out of it when it lifted. One comprehends, too, how the far-off glare of a great vessel afire might be reported
as a local fire on a near-by enemy, or vice versa; how a silhouette caught, for an instant, in a shaft of pale
light let down from the low sky might be fatally difficult to identify till too late. But add to all these inevitable
confusions and misreckonings of time, shape, and distance, charges at every angle of squadrons through and across other
squadrons; sudden shifts of the centres of the fights, and even swifter restorations; wheelings, sweepings, and
regroupments such as accompany the passage across space of colliding universes. Then blanket the whole inferno with the
darkness of night at full speed, and — see what you can make of it.

Three Destroyers

A little time after the action began to heat up between our battle-cruisers and the enemy’s, eight or ten of our
destroyers opened the ball for their branch of the service by breaking up the attack of an enemy light cruiser and
fifteen destroyers. Of these they accounted for at least two destroyers — some think more — and drove the others back
on their battle-cruisers. This scattered that fight a good deal over the sea. Three of our destroyers held on for the
enemy’s battle-fleet, who came down on them at ranges which eventually grew less than 3000 yards. Our people ought to
have been lifted off the seas bodily, but they managed to fire a couple of torpedoes apiece while the range was
diminishing. They had no illusions. Says one of the three, speaking of her second shot, which she loosed at fairly
close range, “This torpedo was fired because it was considered very unlikely that the ship would escape disablement
before another opportunity offered.” But still they lived — three destroyers against all a battle-cruiser fleet’s
quick-firers, as well as the fire of a batch of enemy destroyers at 600 yards. And they were thankful for small
mercies. “The position being favourable,” a third torpedo was fired from each while they yet floated.

At 2500 yards, one destroyer was hit somewhere in the vitals and swerved badly across her next astern, who “was
obliged to alter course to avoid a collision, thereby failing to fire a fourth torpedo.” Then that next astern
“observed signal for destroyers’ recall,” and went back to report to her flotilla captain — alone. Of her two
companions, one was “badly hit and remained stopped between the lines.” The other “remained stopped, but was afloat
when last seen” Ships that “remain stopped” are liable to be rammed or sunk by methodical gun-fire. That was, perhaps,
fifty minutes’ work put in before there was any really vicious “edge” to the action, and it did not steady the nerves
of the enemy battle-cruisers any more than another attack made by another detachment of ours.

“What does one do when one passes a ship that ‘remains stopped’?” asked of a youth who had had experience.

“Nothing special. They cheer, and you cheer back. One doesn’t think about it till afterwards. You see, it may be
your luck in another minute.”

Luck

There were many other torpedo attacks in all parts of the battle that misty afternoon, including a quaint episode of
an enemy light cruiser who “looked as if she were trying” to torpedo one of our battle-cruisers while the latter was
particularly engaged. A destroyer of ours, returning from a special job which required delicacy, was picking her way
back at 30 knots through batches of enemy battle-cruisers and light cruisers with the idea of attaching herself to the
nearest destroyer-flotilla and making herself useful. It occurred to her that as she “was in a most advantageous
position for repelling enemy’s destroyers endeavouring to attack, she could not do better than to remain on the
‘engaged bow’ of our battle-cruiser.” So she remained and considered things.

There was an enemy battle-cruiser squadron in the offing; with several enemy light cruisers ahead of that squadron,
and the weather was thickish and deceptive. She sighted the enemy light cruiser, “class uncertain,” only a few thousand
yards away, and “decided to attack her in order to frustrate her firing torpedoes at our Battle Fleet.” (This in case
the authorities should think that light cruiser, wished to buy rubber.) So she fell upon the light cruiser with every
gun she had, at between two and four thousand yards, and secured a number of hits, just the same as at target practice.
While thus occupied she sighted out of the mist a squadron of enemy battle-cruisers that had worried her earlier in the
afternoon. Leaving the light cruiser, she closed to what she considered a reasonable distance of the newcomers, and let
them have, as she thought, both her torpedoes. She possessed an active Acting Sub-Lieutenant, who, though officers of
that rank think otherwise, is not very far removed from an ordinary midshipman of the type one sees in tow of relatives
at the Army and Navy Stores. He sat astride one of the tubes to make quite sure things were in order, and fired when
the sights came on.

But, at that very moment, a big shell hit the destroyer on the side and there was a tremendous escape of
steam. Believing — since she had seen one torpedo leave the tube before the smash came — believing that both her tubes
had been fired, the destroyer turned away “at greatly reduced speed” (the shell reduced it), and passed, quite
reasonably close, the light cruiser whom she had been hammering so faithfully till the larger game appeared. Meantime,
the Sub-Lieutenant was exploring what damage had been done by the big shell. He discovered that only one of
the two torpedoes had left the tubes, and “observing enemy light cruiser beam on and apparently temporarily stopped,”
he fired the providential remainder at her, and it hit her below the conning-tower and well and truly exploded, as was
witnessed by the Sub-Lieutenant himself, the Commander, a leading signalman, and several other ratings. Luck continued
to hold! The Acting Sub-Lieutenant further reported that “we still had three torpedoes left’ and at the same time drew
my attention to enemy’s line of battleships.” They rather looked as if they were coming down with intent to assault. So
the Sub-Lieutenant fired the rest of the torpedoes, which at least started off correctly from the shell-shaken tubes,
and must have crossed the enemy’s line. When torpedoes turn up among a squadron, they upset the steering and distract
the attention of all concerned. Then the destroyer judged it time to take stock of her injuries. Among other minor
defects she could neither steam, steer, nor signal.

Towing Under Difficulties

Mark how virtue is rewarded! Another of our destroyers an hour or so previously had been knocked clean out of
action, before she had done anything, by a big shell which gutted a boiler-room and started an oil fire. (That is the
drawback to oil.) She crawled out between the battleships till she “reached an area of comparative calm” and repaired
damage. She says: “The fire having been dealt with it was found a mat kept the stokehold dry. My only trouble now being
lack of speed, I looked round for useful employment, and saw a destroyer in great difficulties, so closed her.” That
destroyer was our paralytic friend of the intermittent torpedo-tubes, and a grateful ship she was when her crippled
sister (but still good for a few knots) offered her a tow, “under very trying conditions with large enemy ships
approaching.” So the two set off together, Cripple and Paralytic, with heavy shells falling round them, as sociable as
a couple of lame hounds. Cripple worked up to 12 knots, and the weather grew vile, and the tow parted. Paralytic, by
this time, had raised steam in a boiler or two, and made shift to get along slowly on her own, Cripple hirpling
beside her, till Paralytic could not make any more headway in that rising sea, and Cripple had to tow her
once more. Once more the tow parted. So they tied Paralytic up rudely and effectively with a cable round her after
bollards and gun (presumably because of strained forward bulkheads) and hauled her stern-first, through heavy seas, at
continually reduced speeds, doubtful of their position, unable to sound because of the seas, and much pestered by a
wind which backed without warning, till, at last, they made land, and turned into the hospital appointed for brave
wounded ships. Everybody speaks well of Cripple. Her name crops up in several reports, with such compliments as the men
of the sea use when they see good work. She herself speaks well of her Lieutenant, who, as executive officer, “took
charge of the fire and towing arrangements in a very creditable manner,” and also of Tom Battye and Thomas Kerr,
engine-room artificer and stoker petty officer, who “were in the stokehold at the time of the shell striking, and
performed cool and prompt decisive action, although both suffering from shock and slight injuries.”

Useful Employment

Have you ever noticed that men who do Homeric deeds often describe them in Homeric language? The sentence “I looked
round for useful employment” is worthy of Ulysses when “there was an evil sound at the ships of men who perished and of
the ships themselves broken at the same time.

Roughly, very roughly, speaking, our destroyers enjoyed three phases of “prompt decisive action”— the first, a
period of daylight attacks (from to 4 to 6 P.M.) such as the one I have just described, while the battle was young and
the light fairly good on the afternoon of May 31; the second, towards dark, when the light had lessened and the enemy
were more uneasy, and, I think, in more scattered formation; the third, when darkness had fallen, and the destroyers
had been strung out astern with orders to help the enemy home, which they did all night as opportunity offered. One
cannot say whether the day or the night work was the more desperate. From private advices, the young gentlemen
concerned seem to have functioned with efficiency either way. As one of them said: “After a bit, you see, we were all
pretty much on our own, and you could really find out what your ship could do.”

I will tell you later of a piece of night work not without merit.

Chapter 2

The Night Hunt

AS I said, we will confine ourselves to something quite sane and simple which does not involve more than
half-a-dozen different reports.

When the German fleet ran for home, on the night of May 31, it seems to have scattered —“starred,” I believe, is the
word for the evolution — in a general sauve qui peut, while the Devil, livelily represented by our destroyers,
took the hindmost. Our flotillas were strung out far and wide on this job. One man compared it to hounds hunting half a
hundred separate foxes.

I take the adventures of several couples of destroyers who, on the night of May 31, were nosing along somewhere
towards the Schleswig-Holstein coast, ready to chop any Hun-stuff coming back to earth by that particular road. The
leader of one line was Gehenna, and the next two ships astern of her were Eblis and Shaitan, in the order given. There
were others, of course, but with the exception of one Goblin they don’t come violently into this tale. There had been a
good deal of promiscuous firing that evening, and actions were going on all, round. Towards midnight our destroyers
were overtaken by several three- and four funnel German ships (cruisers they thought) hurrying home. At this stage of
the game anybody might have been anybody — pursuer or pursued. The Germans took no chances, but switched on their
searchlights and opened fire on Gehenna. Her acting sub-lieutenant reports: “A salvo hit us forward. I opened fire with
the after-guns. A shell then struck us in a steam-pipe, and I could see nothing but steam. But both starboard
torpedo-tubes were fired.”

Eblis, Gehenna’s next astern, at once fire a torpedo at the second ship in the German line, a four-funnelled
cruiser, and hit her between the second funnel and the mainmast, when “she appeared to catch fire fore and aft
simultaneously, heeled right over to starboard, and undoubtedly sank.” Eblis loosed off a second torpedo and turned
aside to reload, firing at the same time to distract the enemy’s attention from Gehenna, who was now ablaze fore and
aft. Gehenna’s acting sub-lieutenant (the only executive officer who survived) says that by the time the steam from the
broken pipe cleared he found Gehenna stopped, nearly everybody amidships killed or wounded, the cartridge-boxes round
the guns exploding one after the other as the fires took hold, and the enemy not to be seen. Three minutes or less did
all that damage. Eblis had nearly finished reloading when a shot struck the davit that was swinging her last torpedo
into the tube and wounded all hands concerned. Thereupon she dropped torpedo work, fired at an enemy searchlight which
winked and went out, and was closing in to help Gehenna when the found herself under the noses of a couple of enemy
cruisers. “The nearer one,” he says, “altered course to ram me apparently.” The Senior Service writes in curiously
lawyer-like fashion, but there is no denying that they act quite directly. “I therefore put my helm hard aport and the
two ships met and rammed each other, port bow to port bow.” There could have been no time to think and, for Eblis’s
commander on the bridge, none to gather information But he had observant subordinates, and he writes and would humbly
suggest that the words be made the ship’s motto for evermore — he writes, “Those aft noted” that the enemy cruiser had
certain marks on her funnel and certain arrangements of derricks on each side which, quite apart from the evidence she
left behind her, betrayed her class. Eblis and she met. Says Eblis “I consider I must have considerably damaged this
cruiser, as 20 feet of her side plating was left in my foc’sle.” Twenty feet of ragged rivet-slinging steel, razoring
and reaping about in the dark on a foc’sle that had collapsed like a concertina! It was very fair plating too. There
were side-scuttle holes in it what we passengers would call portholes. But it might have been better, for Eblis reports
sorrowfully, “by the thickness of the coats of paint (duly given in 32nds of the inch) she would not appear to have
been a very new ship.”

A Fugitive on Fire

New or old, the enemy had done her best. She had completely demolished Eblis’s bridge and searchlight platform,
brought down the mast and the fore-funnel, ruined the whaler and the dinghy, split the foc’sle open above water from
the stem to the galley which is abaft the bridge, and below water had opened it up from the stem to the second
bulkhead. She had further ripped off Eblis’s skin-plating for an amazing number of yards on one side of her, and had
fired a couple of large-calibre shells into Eblis at point-blank range, narrowly missing her vitals. Even so, Eblis is
as impartial as a prize-court. She reports that the second shot, a trifle of eight inches, “may have been fired at a
different time or just after colliding.” But the night was yet young, and “just after getting clear of this cruiser an
enemy battle-cruiser grazed past our stern at high speed” and again the judgmatic mind —“I think she must have intended
to ram us.” She was a large three-funnelled thing, her centre funnel shot away and “lights were flickering under her
foc’sle as if she was on fire forward.” Fancy the vision of her, hurtling out of the dark, red-lighted from within, and
fleeing on like a man with his throat cut!

[As an interlude, all enemy cruisers that night were not keen on ramming. They wanted to get home. A man know who
was on another part of the drive saw a covey bolt through our destroyers; and had just settled himself for a shot at
one of them when the night threw up a second bird coming down full speed on his other beam. He had bare time to jink
between the two as they whizzed past. One switched on her searchlight and fired a whole salvo at him point blank. The
heavy stuff went between his funnels. She must have sighted along her own beam of light, which was about a thousand
yards.

“How did you feel?” I asked.

“I was rather sick. It was my best chance a that night, and I had to miss it or be cut in two.”

“What happened to the cruisers?”

“Oh, they went on, and I heard ’em being attended to by some of our fellows. They didn’t know what they were doing,
or they couldn’t have missed me sitting, the way they did.”]

The Confidential Books

After all that Eblis picked herself up, and discovered that she was still alive, with a dog’s chance of getting to
port. But she did not bank on it. That grand slam had wrecked the bridge, pinning the commander under the wreckage. By
the time he had extricated himself he “considered it advisable to throw overboard the steel chest and dispatch-box of
confidential and secret books.” These are never allowed to fall into strange hands, and their proper disposal is the
last step but one in the ritual of the burial service of His Majesty’s ships at sea. Gehenna, afire and sinking, out
somewhere in the dark, was going through it on her own account. This is her Acting Sub-Lieutenant’s report: “The
confidential books were got up. The First Lieutenant gave the order ‘Every man aft,’ and the confidential books were
thrown overboard. The ship soon afterwards heeled over to starboard and the bows went under. The First Lieutenant gave
the order: ‘Everybody for themselves.’ The ship sank in about a minute, the stern going straight up into the air.”

But it was not written in the Book of Fate that stripped and battered Ebbs should die that night as Gehenna died.
After the burial of the books it was found that the several fires on her were manageable, that she “was not making
water aft of the damage,” which meant two-thirds of her were, more or less, in commission, and, best of all, that three
boilers were usable in spite of the cruiser’s shells. So she “shaped course and speed to make the least water and the
most progress towards land.” On the way back the wind shifted eight points without warning — it was this shift, if you
remember, that so embarrassed Cripple and Paralytic on their homeward crawl — and, what with one thing and another,
Eblis was unable to make port till the scandalously late hour of noon on June 2, “the mutual ramming having occurred
about 11.40 P.M. on May 31.” She says, this time without any legal reservation whatever, “I cannot speak too highly of
the courage, discipline, and devotion of the officers and ship’s company.”

Her recommendations are a Compendium of Godly Deeds for the Use of Mariners. They cover pretty much all that man may
be expected to do. There was, as there always is, a first lieutenant who, while his commander was being extricate from
the bridge wreckage, took charge of affairs and steered the ship first from the engine-room, or what remained of it,
and later from aft, and otherwise manœuvred as requisite, among doubtful bulkheads. In his leisure he, “improvised
means of signalling,” and if there be not one joyous story behind that smooth sentence I am a Hun!

The Art of Improvising

They all improvised like the masters of craft they were. The chief engine-room artificer, after he had helped to put
out fires, improvised stops to the gaps which were left by the carrying away of the forward funnel and mast. He got and
kept up steam “to a much higher point than would have appeared at all possible,” and when the sea rose, as it always
does if you are in trouble, he “improvised pumping and drainage arrangements, thus allowing the ship to steam at a good
speed on the whole.” There could not have been more than 40 feet of hole.

The surgeon — a probationer — performed an amputation single-handed in the wreckage by the bridge, and by his
“wonderful skill, resource, and unceasing care and devotion undoubtedly saved the lives of the many seriously wounded
men.” That no horror might be lacking, there was “a short circuit among the bridge wreckage for a considerable time.”
The searchlight and wireless were tangled up together, and the electricity leaked into everything.

There were also three wise men who save the ship whose names must not be forgotten. They were Chief Engine-room
Artificer Lee, Stoker Petty Officer Gardiner, and Stoker Elvins. When the funnel carried away it was touch and go
whether the foremost boiler would not explode. These three “put on respirators and kept the fans going till all fumes,
etc., were cleared away.” To each man, you will observe, his own particular Hell which he entered of his own particular
initiative.

Lastly, there were the two remaining Quartermasters — mutinous dogs, both of ’em — one wounded in the right hand and
the other in the left, who took the wheel between them all the way home, thus improvising one complete Navy-pattern
Quartermaster, and “refused to be relieved during the whole thirty-six hours before the ship returned to port.” So
Eblis passes out of the picture with “never a moan or complaint from a single wounded man, and in spite of the rough
weather of June 1st they all remained cheery.” They had one Hun cruiser, torpedoed, to their credit, and strong
evidence abroad that they had knocked the end out of another.

But Gehenna went down, and those of her crew who remained hung on to the rafts that destroyers carry till they were
picked up about the dawn by Shaitan, third in the line, who, at that hour, was in no shape to give much help. Here is
Shaitan’s tale. She saw the unknown cruisers overtake the flotilla, saw their leader switch on searchlights and open
fire as she drew abreast of Gehenna, and at once fired a torpedo at the third German ship. Shaitan could not see Eblis,
her next ahead, for, as we know, Eblis after firing her torpedoes had hauled off to reload. When the enemy switched his
searchlights off Shaitan hauled out too. It is not wholesome for destroyers to keep on the same course within a
thousand yards of big enemy cruisers.

She picked up a destroyer of another division, Goblin, who for the moment had not been caught by the enemy’s
searchlights and had profited by this decent obscurity to fire a torpedo at the hindmost of the cruisers. Almost as
Shaitan took station behind Goblin the latter was lighted up by a large ship and heavily fired at. The enemy fled, but
she left Goblin out of control, with a grisly list of casualties, and her helm jammed. Goblin swerved, returned, and
swerved again; Shaitan astern tried to clear her, and the two fell aboard each other, Goblin’s bows deep in Shaitan’s
fore-bridge. While they hung thus, locked, an unknown destroyer rammed Shaitan aft, cutting off several feet of her
stern an leaving her rudder jammed hard over. As complete a mess as the Personal Devil himself could have devised., and
all due to the merest accident of a few panicky salvoes. Presently the two ships worked clear in a smother of steam and
oil, and went their several ways. Quite a while after she had parted from Shaitan, Goblin discovered several of
Shaitan’s people, some of them wounded, on her own foc’sle, where they had been pitched by the collision. Goblin,
working her way homeward on such boilers as remained, carried on a one-gun fight at a few cables’ distance with some
enemy destroyers, who, not knowing what state she was in, sheered off after a few rounds. Shaitan, holed forward and
opened up aft, came across the survivors from Gehenna clinging to their raft, and took them aboard. Then some of our
destroyers — they were thick on the sea that night — tried to tow her stern-first, for Goblin had cut her up badly
forward. But, since Shaitan lacked any stern, and her rudder was jammed hard across where the stern should have been,
the hawsers parted, and, after leave asked of lawful authority, across all that waste of waters, they sank Shaitan by
gun-fire, having first taken all the proper steps about the confidential books. Yet Shaitan had had her little crumb of
comfort ere the end. While she lay crippled she saw quite close to her a German cruiser that was trailing homeward in
the dawn gradually heel over and sink.

This completes my version of the various accounts of the four destroyers directly concerned for a few hours, on one
minute section of one wing of our battle. Other ships witnessed other aspects of the agony and duly noted them as they
went about their business. One of our battleships, for instance, made out by the glare of burning Gehenna that the
supposed cruiser that Eblis torpedoed was German battleship of a certain class. So Gehenna did not die in vain, and we
may take it that the discovery did not unduly depress Eblis’s wounded in hospital.

Asking for Trouble

The rest of the flotilla that the four destroyers belonged to had their own adventures later. One of them, chasing
or being chased, saw Goblin out of control just before Goblin and Shaitan locked, and narrowly escaped adding herself
to that triple collision. Another loosed a couple of torpedoes at the enemy ships who were attacking Gehenna, which,
perhaps, accounts for the anxiety of the enemy to break away from that hornets’ nest as soon as possible. Half a dozen
or so of them ran into four German battleships, which they set about torpedoing at ranges varying from half a mile to a
mile and a half. It was asking for trouble and they got it; but they got in return at least one big ship, and the same
observant battleship of ours who identified Eblis’s bird reported three satisfactory explosions in half an
hour, followed by a glare that lit up all the sky. One of the flotilla, closing on what she thought was the smoke of a
sister in difficulties, found herself well in among the four battleships. “It was too late to get away,” she says, so
she attacked, fired her torpedo, was caught up in the glare of a couple of searchlights, and pounded to pieces in five
minutes, not even her rafts being left. She went down with her colours flying, having fought to the last available
gun.

Another destroyer who had borne a hand in Gehenna’s trouble had her try at the four battleships and got in a torpedo
at 800 yards. She saw it explode and the ship take a heavy list. “Then I was chased,” which is not surprising. She
picked up a friend who could only do 20 knots. They sighted several Hun destroyers who fled from them; then dropped on
to four Hun destroyers all together, who made great parade of commencing action, but soon afterwards “thought better of
it, and turned away.” So you see, in that flotilla alone there was every variety of fight, from the ordered attacks of
squadrons under control, to single ship affairs, every turn of which depended on the second’s decision of the men
concerned; endurance to the hopeless end; bluff and cunning; reckless advance and red-hot flight; clear vision and as
much of blank bewilderment as the Senior Service permits its children to indulge in. That is not much. When a destroyer
who has been dodging enemy torpedoes and gun-fire in the dark realises about midnight that she is “following a strange
British flotilla, having lost sight of my own,” she “decides to remain with them,” and shares their fortunes and
whatever language is going.

If lost hounds could speak when they cast up next day, after an unchecked night among the wild life of the dark,
they would talk much as our destroyers do.

Chapter 3

The Meaning of Joss

As one digs deeper into the records, one sees the various temperaments of men revealing themselves through all the
formal wording. One commander may be an expert in torpedo-work, whose first care is how and where his shots went, and
whether, under all circumstances of pace, light, and angle, the best had been achieved. Destroyers do not carry
unlimited stocks of torpedoes. It rests with commanders whether they shall spend with a free hand at first or save for
night-work ahead — risk a possible while he is yet afloat, or hang on coldly for a certainty. So in the old whaling
days did the harponeer bring up or back off his boat till some shift of the great fish’s bulk gave him sure opening at
the deep-seated life.

And then comes the question of private judgment. “I thought so-and-so would happen. Therefore, did thus and thus.”
Things may or may not turn out as anticipated, but that is merely another of the million chances of the sea. Take a
case in point. A flotilla of our destroyers sighted six (there had been eight the previous afternoon) German
battleships of Kingly and Imperial caste very early in the morning of the 1st June, and duly attacked. At first our
people ran parallel to the enemy, then, as far as one can make out, headed them and swept round sharp to the left,
firing torpedoes from their port or left-hand tubes. Between them they hit a battleship, which went up in flame and
débris. But one of the flotilla had not turned with the rest. She had anticipated that the attack would be
made on another quarter, and, for certain technical reasons, she was not ready. When she was, she turned, and
single-handed — the rest of the flotilla having finished and gone on — carried out two attacks on the five remaining
battleships. She got one of them amidships, causing a terrific explosion and flame above the masthead, which signifies
that the magazine has been touched off. She counted the battleships when the smoke had cleared, and there were but four
of them. She herself was not hit, though shots fell close. She went her way, and, seeing nothing of her sisters, picked
up another flotilla and stayed with it till the end. Do I make clear the maze of blind hazard and wary judgment in
which our men of the sea must move?

Saved by a Smoke Screen

Some of the original flotilla were chased and headed about by cruisers after their attack on the six battleships,
and a single shell from battleship or cruiser reduced one of them to such a condition that she was brought home by her
sub-lieutenant and a midshipman. Her captain, first lieutenant, gunner, torpedo coxswain, and both signal- men were
either killed or wounded; the bridge, with charts, instruments, and signalling gear went; all torpedoes were expended;
a gun was out of action, and the usual cordite fires developed. Luckily, the engines were workable. She escaped under
cover of a smoke-screen, which is an unbearably filthy outpouring of the densest smoke, made by increasing the
proportion of oil to air in the furnace-feed. It rolls forth from the funnels looking solid enough to sit upon, spreads
in a searchlight-proof pat of impenetrable beastliness, and in still weather hangs for hours. But it saved that
ship.

It is curious to note the subdued tone of a boy’s report when by some accident of slaughter he is raised to command.
There are certain formalities which every ship must comply with on entering certain ports. No fully-striped commander
would trouble to detail them any more than he would the aspect of his Club porter. The young ’un puts it all down, as
who should say: “I rang the bell, wiped my feet on the mat, and asked if they were at home.” He is most careful of the
port proprieties, and since he will be sub. again to-morrow, and all his equals will tell him exactly how he ought to
have handled her, he almost apologises for the steps he took — deeds which ashore might be called cool or daring.

The Senior Service does not gush. There are certain formulae appropriate to every occasion. One of our destroyers,
who was knocked out early in the day and lay helpless, was sighted by several of her companions. One of them reported
her to the authorities, but, being busy at the time, said he did not think himself justified in hampering himself with
a disabled ship in the middle of an action. It was not as if she was sinking either. She was only holed foreward and
aft, with a bad hit in the engineroom, and her steering-gear knocked out. In this posture she cheered the passing
ships, and set about repairing her hurts with good heart and a smiling countenance. She managed to get under some sort
of way at midnight, and next day was taken in tow by a friend. She says officially, “his assistance was invaluable, as
I had no oil left and met heavy weather.”

What actually happened was much less formal. Fleet destroyers, as a rule, do not worry about navigation. They take
their orders from the flagship, and range out and return, on signal, like sheep-dogs whose fixed point is their
shepherd. Consequently, when they break loose on their own they may fetch up rather doubtful of their whereabouts — as
this injured one did. After she had been so kindly taken in tow, she inquired of her friend (“Message captain to
captain”)—“Have you any notion where we are?” The friend replied, “I have not, but I will find out.” So the friend
waited on the sun with the necessary implements, which luckily had not been smashed, and in due time made: “Our
observed position at this hour is thus and thus.” The tow, irreverently, “Is it? ’Didn’t know you were a navigator.”
The friend, with hauteur, “Yes; it’s rather a hobby of mine.” The tow, “Had no idea it was as bad as all that; but I’m
afraid I’ll have to trust you this time. Go ahead, and be quick about it.” They reached a port, correctly enough, but
to this hour the tow, having studied with the friend at a place called Dartmouth, insists that it was pure Joss.

Concerning Joss

And Joss, which is luck, fortune, destiny, the irony of Fate or Nemesis, is the greatest of all the Battle-gods that
move on the waters. As I will show you later, knowledge of gunnery and a delicate instinct for what is in the enemy’s
minds may enable a destroyer to thread her way, slowing, speeding, and twisting between the heavy salvoes of opposing
fleets. As the dank-smelling waterspouts rise and break, she judges where the next grove of them will sprout. If her
judgment is correct, she may enter it in her report as a little feather in her cap. But it is Joss when the stray
12-inch shell, hurled by a giant at some giant ten miles away, falls on her from Heaven and wipes out her and her
profound calculations. This was seen to happen to a Hun destroyer in mid-attack. While she was being laboriously dealt
with by a 4-inch gun something immense took her, and — she was not.

Joss it is, too, when the cruiser’s 8-inch shot, that should have raked out your innards from the forward boiler to
the ward-room stove, deflects miraculously, like a twig dragged through deep water, and, almost returning on its track,
skips off unbursten and leaves you reprieved by the breadth of a nail from three deaths in one. Later, a single
splinter, no more, may cut your oil-supply pipes as dreadfully and completely as a broken wind-screen in a collision
cuts the surprised motorist’s throat. Then you must lie useless, fighting oil-fires while the precious fuel gutters
away till you have to ask leave to escape while there are yet a few tons left. One ship who was once bled white by such
a piece of Joss, suggested it would be better that oil-pipes should be led along certain lines which she sketched. As
if that would make any difference to Joss when he wants to show what he can do!

Our sea-people, who have worked with him for a thousand wettish years, have acquired something of Joss’s large
toleration and humour. He causes ships in thick weather, or under strain, to mistake friends for enemies. At such
times, if your heart is full of highly organised hate, you strafe frightfully and efficiently till one of you perishes,
and the survivor reports wonders which are duly wirelessed all over the world. But if you worship Joss, you reflect,
you put two and two together in a casual insular way, and arrive — sometimes both parties arrive — at instinctive
conclusions which avoid trouble.

An Affair in the North Sea

Witness this tale. It does not concern the Jutland fight, but another little affair which took place a while ago in
the North Sea. It was understood that a certain type of cruiser of ours would not be taking part in a certain
show. Therefore, if anyone saw cruisers very like them he might blaze at them with a clear conscience, for they would
be Hun-boats. And one of our destroyers thick weather as usual spied the silhouettes of cruisers exactly like our own
stealing across the haze. Said the Commander to his Sub., with an inflection neither period, exclamation, nor
interrogation-mark can render —“That — is — them.”

Said the Sub. in precisely the same tone —“That is them, sir.” “As my Sub.,” said the Commander, “your observation
is strictly in accord with the traditions of the Service. Now, as man to man, what are they?” “We-el,” said the Sub.,
“since you put it that way I’m d —— d if I’d fire.” And they didn’t, and they were quite right. The destroyer
had been off on another job, and Joss had jammed the latest wireless orders to her at the last moment. But Joss had
also put it into the hearts of the boys to save themselves and others.

I hold no brief for the Hun, but honestly I think he has not lied as much about the Jutland fight as people believe,
and that when he protests he sank a ship, he did very completely sink a ship. I am the more confirmed in this
belief by a still small voice among the Jutland reports, musing aloud over an account of an unaccountable outlying
brawl witnessed by one of our destroyers. The voice suggests that what the destroyer saw was one German ship being sunk
by another. Amen!

Our destroyers saw a good deal that night on the face of the waters. Some of them who were working in “areas of
comparative calm” submit charts of their tangled courses, all studded with notes along the zigzag — something like
this:—

8 P.M. — Heard explosion to the N.W. (A neat arrow-head points that way.) Half an inch farther along, a
short change of course, and the word Hit explains the meaning of —“Sighted enemy cruiser engaged with
destroyers.” Another twist follows. “9.30 P.M. — Passed wreckage. Engaged enemy destroyers port beam opposite
courses.” A long straight line without incident, then a tangle, and — Picked up survivors of So-and-So. A
stretch over to some ship that they were transferred to, a fresh departure, and another brush with “Single
destroyer on parallel course. Hit. 0.7 A.M. — Passed bows enemy cruiser sticking up. 0.18. — Joined
flotilla for attack on battleship squadron.” So it runs on — one little ship in a few short hours passing through
more wonders of peril and accident than all the old fleets ever dreamed.

A “Child’s” Letter

In years to come naval experts will collate all those diagrams, and furiously argue over them. A lot of the
destroyer work was inevitably as mixed as bombing down a trench, as the scuffle of a polo match, or as the hot heaving
heart of a football scrum. It is difficult to realise when one considers the size of the sea, that it is that very size
and absence of boundary which helps the confusion. To give an idea, here is a letter (it has been quoted before,
believe, but it is good enough to repeat many times), from a nineteen-year-old child to his friend aged seventeen (and
minus one leg), in a hospital:

“I’m so awfully sorry you weren’t in it. It was rather terrible, but a wonderful experience, and I wouldn’t have
missed it for anything, but, by Jove, it isn’t a thing one wants to make a habit of.

“I must say it is very different from what I expected. I expected to be excited, but was not a bit. It’s hard to
express what we did feel like, but you know the sort of feeling one has when one goes in to bat at cricket, and rather
a lot depends upon your doing well, and you are waiting for the first ball. Well, it’s very much the same as that. Do
you know what I mean? A sort of tense feeling, not quite knowing what to expect. One does not feel the slightest bit
frightened, and the idea that there’s a chance of you and your ship being scuppered does not enter one’s head. There
are too many other things to think about.”

Follows the usual “No ship like our ship” talkee, and a note of where she was at the time.

“Then they ordered us to attack, so we bustled off full bore. Being navigator, also having control of all the guns,
I was on the bridge all the time, and remained for twelve hours without leaving it at all. When we got fairly close
sighted a good-looking Hun destroyer, which I thought I’d like to strafe. You know, it’s awful fun to know that you can
blaze off at a real ship, and do as much damage as you like. Well, I’d just got their range on the guns, and we’d just
fired one round, when some more of our destroyers coming from the opposite direction got between us and the enemy and
completely blanketed us, so we had to stop, which was rather rot. Shortly afterwards they recalled us, so we bustled
back again. How any destroyer got out of it is perfectly wonderful.

“Literally there were hundreds of progs (shells falling) all round us, from a 15-inch to a 4-inch, and you know what
a big splash a 15-inch bursting in the water does make. We got washed through by the spray. Just as we were getting
back, a whole salvo of big shells fell just in front of us and short of our big ships. The skipper and I did rapid
calculations as to how long it would take them to reload, fire again, time of flight, etc., as we had to go right
through the spot. We came to the conclusion that, as they were short a bit, they would probably go up a bit, and
(they?) didn’t, but luckily they altered deflection, and the next fell right astern of us. Anyhow, we managed to come
out of that row without the ship or a man on board being touched.

What the Big Ships Stand

“It’s extraordinary the amount of knocking about the big ships can stand. One saw them hit, and they seemed to be
one mass of flame and smoke, and you think they’re gone, but when the smoke clears away they are apparently none the
worse and still firing away. But to see a ship blow up is a terrible and wonderful sight; an enormous volume of flame
and smoke almost 200 feet high and great pieces of metal, etc., blown sky-high, and then when the smoke clears not a
sign of the ship. We saw one other extraordinary sight. Of course, you know the North Sea is very shallow. We came
across Hun cruiser absolutely on end, his stern on the bottom and his bow sticking up about 30 feet in the water; and a
little farther on a destroyer in precisely the same position.

“I couldn’t be certain, but I rather think I saw your old ship crashing along and blazing away, but, I expect you
have heard from some of your pals. But the night was far and away the worse time of all. It was pitch dark, and, of
course, absolutely no lights, and the firing seems so much more at night, as you could see the flashes lighting up the
sky, and it seemed to make much more noise, and you could see ships on fire and blowing up. Of course we
showed absolutely no lights. One expected to be surprised any moment, and eventually we were. We suddenly found
ourselves within 1000 yards of two or three big Hun cruisers. They switched on their searchlights and started firing
like nothing on earth. Then they put their searchlights on us, but for some extraordinary reason did not fire on us.
As, of course, we were going full speed we lost them in a moment, but I must say, that I, and I think everybody else,
thought that that was the end, but one does not feel afraid or panicky. I think I felt rather cooler then than at any
other time. I asked lots of people afterwards what they felt like, and they all said the same thing. It all happens in
a few seconds; one hasn’t time to think; but never in all my life have I been so thankful to see daylight again — and
don’t think ever want to see another night like that — it’s such an awful strain. One does not notice it at the time,
but it’s the reaction afterwards.

“I never noticed I was tired till I got back to harbour, and then we all turned in and absolutely slept like logs.
We were seventy-two hours with little or no sleep. The skipper was perfectly wonderful. He never left the bridge for a
minute for twenty-four hours, and was on the bridge or in the chart-house the whole time we were out (the chart-house
is an airy dog-kennel that opens off the bridge) and I’ve never seen anybody so cool and unruffled. He stood there
smoking his pipe as if nothing out of the ordinary were happening.

“One quite forgot all about time. I was relieved at 4 A.M., and on looking at my watch found I had been up there
nearly twelve hours, and then discovered I was rather hungry. The skipper and I had some cheese and biscuits, ham
sandwiches, and water on the bridge, and then I went down and brewed some cocoa and ship’s biscuit.”

Chapter 4

The Minds of Men

WHAT mystery is there like the mystery of the other man’s job — or what world so cut off as that which he enters
when he goes to it? The eminent surgeon is altogether such an one as ourselves, even till his hand falls on the knob of
the theatre door. After that, in the silence, among the ether fumes, no man except his acolytes, and they won’t tell,
has ever seen his face. So with the unconsidered curate. Yet, before the war, he had more experience of the business
and detail of death than any of the people who contemned him. His face also, as he stands his bedside-watches — that
countenance with which he shall justify himself to his Maker — none have ever looked upon. Even the ditcher is a priest
of mysteries at the high moment when he lays out in his mind his levels and the fall of the water that he alone can
draw off clearly. But catch any of these men five minutes after they have left their altars, and you will find the
doors are shut.

Chance sent me almost immediately after the Jutland fight a Lieutenant of one of the destroyers engaged. Among other
matters, I asked him if there was any particular noise.

“Well, I haven’t been in the trenches, of course,” he replied, “but I don’t think there could have been much more
noise than there was.”

This bears out a report of a destroyer who could not be certain whether an enemy battleship had blown up or not,
saying that, in that particular corner, it would have been impossible to identify anything thing less than the
explosion of a whole magazine.

“It wasn’t exactly noise,” he reflected. “Noise is what you take in from outside. This was inside you. It
seems to lift you right out of everything.”

“An how did the light affect one?” I asked, trying to work out a theory that noise and light produced beyond known
endurance form an unknown anaesthetic and stimulant, comparable to, but infinitely more potent than, the soothing
effect of the smoke-pall of ancient battles.

“The lights were rather curious,” was the answer. “I don’t know that one noticed searchlights particularly, unless
they meant business; but when a lot of big guns loosed off together, the whole sea was lit up and you could see our
destroyers running about like cockroaches on a tin soup-plate.”

“Then is black the best colour for our destroyers? Some commanders seem to think we ought to use grey.”

“Blessed if I know,” said young Dante. “Everything shows black in that light. Then it all goes out again
with a bang. Trying for the eyes if you are spotting.”

Ship Dogs

“And how did the dogs take it?” pursued. There are several destroyers more or less owned by pet dogs, who start life
as the chance-found property of a stoker, an end in supreme command of the bridge.

“Most of ’em didn’t like it a bit. They went below one time, and wanted to be loved. They knew it wasn’t ordinary
practice.”

“What did Arabella do?” I had heard a good deal of Arabella.

“Oh, Arabella’s quite different. Her job has always been to look after her master’s pyjamas — folded up at
the head of the bunk, you know. She found out pretty soon the bridge was no place for a lady, so she hopped downstairs
and got in. You know how she makes three little jumps to it — first, on to the chair; then on the flap-table, and then
up on the pillow. When the show was over, there she was as usual.”

“Was she glad to see her master?”

“Ra-ather. Arabella was the bold, gay 1ady-dog then!”

Now Arabella is between nine and eleven and a half inches long.

“ Does the Hun run to pets at all?”

“I shouldn’t say so. He’s an unsympathetic felon — the Hun. But he might cherish a dachshund or so. We never picked
up any ships’ pets off him, and I’m sure we should if there had been.”

That I believed as implicitly as the tale of a destroyer attack some months ago, the object of which was to flush
Zeppelins. It succeeded, for the flotilla was attacked by several. Right in the middle of the flurry, a destroyer asked
permission to stop and lower dinghy to pick up ship’s dog which had fallen overboard. Permission was granted, and the
dog was duly rescued. “Lord. knows what the Hun made of it,” said my informant. “He was rumbling round, dropping bombs;
and the dinghy was digging out for all she was worth, and the Dog-Fiend was swimming for Dunkirk. It must have looked
rather mad from above. But they saved, the Dog-Fiend, and then everybody swore he was a German spy in disguise.”

The Fight

“And — about this Jutland fight?” I hinted, not for the first time.

“Oh, that was just a fight. There was more of it than any other fight, I suppose, but I expect all modern naval
actions must be pretty much the same.”

“But what does one do — how does one feel?” I insisted, though I knew it was hopeless.

“One does one’s job. Things are happening all the time. A man may be right under your nose one minute — serving a
gun or something — and the next minute he isn’t there.”

“And one notices that ’at the time?”

“Yes. But there’s no time to keep on noticing it. You’ve got to carry on somehow or other, or your show
stops. I tell you what one does notice, though. If one goes below for anything, or has to pass through a flat
somewhere, and one sees the old wardroom clock ticking, or a photograph pinned up, or anything of that sort, one
notices that. Oh yes, and there was another thing — the way a ship seemed to blow up if you were far off her.
You’d see a glare, then a blaze, and then the smoke — miles high, lifting quite slowly. Then you’d get the row and the
jar of it — just like bumping over submarines. Then, a long while after p’raps, you run through a regular rain of bits
of burnt paper coming down on the decks — like showers of volcanic ash, you know.” The door of the operating-room
seemed just about to open, but it shut again.

“And the Huns’ gunnery?”

“That was various. Sometimes they began quite well, and went to pieces after they’d been strafed a little; but
sometimes they picked up again. There was one Hunboat that got no end of a hammering, and it seemed to do her gunnery
good. She improved tremendously till we sank her. I expect we’d knocked out some scientific Hun in the controls, an
he’d been succeeded by a man who knew how.”

It used to be “Fritz” last year when they spoke of the enemy. Now it is Hun or, as I have heard, “Yahun,” being a
superlative of Yahoo. In the Napoleonic wars we called the Frenchmen too many names for any one of them to endure but
this is the age of standardisation.

“And what about our Lower Deck?” I continued.

“They? Oh, they carried on as usual. It takes a lot to impress the Lower Deck when they’re busy.” And he mentioned
several little things that confirmed this. They had a great deal to do, and they did it serenely because they had been
trained to carry on under all conditions without panicking. What they did in the way of running repairs was even more
wonderful, if that be possible, than their normal routine.

The Lower Deck nowadays is full of strange fish with unlooked-for accomplishments, as in the recorded case of two
simple seamen of a destroyer who, when need was sorest, came to the front as trained experts in first-aid.

“And now — what about the actual Hun losses at Jutland?” I ventured.

“You’ve seen the list, haven’t you?”

“Yes, but it occurred to me — that they might have been a shade under-estimated, and I thought perhaps ——”

A perfectly plain asbestos fire-curtain descended in front of the already locked door. It was none of his business
to dispute the drive. If there were any discrepancies between estimate and results, one might be sure that the enemy
knew about them, which was the chief thing that mattered.

It was, said he, Joss that the light was so bad at the hour of the last round-up when our main fleet had come down
from the north and shovelled the Hun round on his tracks. Per contra, had it been any other kind of weather,
the odds were the Hun would not have ventured so far. As it was, the Hun’s fleet had come out and gone back again, none
the better for air and exercise, We must be thankful for what we had managed to pick up. But talking of picking up,
there was an instance of almost unparalleled Joss which had stuck in his memory. A soldier-man, related to one of the
officers in one of our ships that was put down, had got five days’ leave from the trenches which he spent with his
relative aboard, and thus dropped in for the whole performance. He had been employed in helping to spot, and had lived
up a mast till the ship sank, when he stepped off into the water and swam about till he was fished out and put ashore.
By that time, the tale goes, his engine-room-dried khaki had shrunk half-way up his legs and arms, in which costume he
reported himself to the War Office, and pleaded for one little day’s extension of leave to make himself decent. “Not a
bit of it,” said the War office. “If you choose to’ spend your leave playing with sailor-men and getting wet all over,
that’s your concern. You will return to duty by to-night’s boat.” (This may be a libel on the W.O., but it
sounds very like them.) “And he had to,” said the boy, “but I expect he spent the next week at Headquarters telling fat
generals all about the fight”

“And, of course, the Admiralty gave you all lots of leave?”

“Us? Yes, heaps. We had nothing to do except clean down and oil up, and be ready to go to sea again in a few
hours.”

That little fact was brought out at the end of almost every destroyer’s report. “Having returned to base at such and
such a time, I took in oil, etc., and reported ready for sea at — o’clock.” When you think of the amount of work a ship
needs even after peace manœuvres, you can realise what has to be done on the heels of an action. And, as there is
nothing like housework for the troubled soul of a woman, so a general clean-up is good for sailors. I had this from a
petty officer who had also passed through deep waters. “If you’ve seen your best friend go from alongside you, and your
own officer, and your own boat’s crew with him, and things of that kind, a man’s best comfort is small variegated jobs
which he is damned for continuous.”

The Silent Navy

Presently my friend of the destroyer went back to his stark, desolate life, where feelings do not count, and the
fact of his being cold, wet, sea-sick, sleepless, or dog-tired had no bearing whatever on his business, which was to
turn out at any hour in any weather and do or endure, decently, according to ritual, what that hour and that weather
demanded. It is hard to reach the kernel of Navy minds. The unbribable seas and mechanisms the work on and through have
given them the simplicity of elements and machines. The habit of dealing with swift accident, a life of closest and
strictest association with their own caste as well as contact with all kinds of men all earth over, have added an
immense cunning to those qualities; and that they are from early youth cut out of all feelings that may come between
them and their ends, makes them more incomprehensible than Jesuits, even to their own people. What, then, must they be
to the enemy?

Here is a Service which prowls forth and achieves, at the lowest, something of a victory. How far-reaching a one
only the war’s end will reveal. It returns in gloomy silence, broken by the occasional hoot of the long-shore loafer,
after issuing a bulletin which though it may enlighten the professional mind does not exhilarate the layman. Meantime
the enemy triumphs, wirelessly, far and wide. A few frigid and perfunctory-seeming contradictions are put forwary
against his resounding claims; a Naval expert or two is heard talking “off”; the rest is silence. Anon, the enemy,
after a prodigious amount of explanation which not even the neutrals seem to take any interest in, revises his claims,
and, very modestly, enlarges his losses. Still no sign. After weeks there appears a document giving our version of the
affair, which is as colourless, detached, and scrupulously impartial as the findings of a prize-court. It opines that
the list of enemy losses which it submits “give the minimum in regard to numbers though it is possibly not entirely
accurate in regard to the particular class of vessel, especially those that were sunk during the night attacks.” Here
the matter rests and remains — just like our blockade. There is an insolence about it all that makes one gasp.

Yet that insolence springs naturally and unconsciously as an oath, out of the same spirit that caused the destroyer
to pick up the dog. The reports themselves, and tenfold more the stories not in the reports, are charged with it, but
no words by any outsider can reproduce just that professional tone and touch. A man writing home after the fight,
points out that the great consolation for not having cleaned up the enemy altogether was that “anyhow those East Coast
devils”— a fellow-squadron, if you please, which up till Jutland had had most of the fighting —“were not there. They
missed that show. We were as cock-ahoop as a girl who had been to a dance that her sister has missed.”

This was one of the figures in that dance:

“A little British destroyer, her midships rent by a great shell meant for a battle-cruiser; exuding steam from every
pore; able to go ahead but not to steer; unable to get out of anybody’s way, likely to be rammed by any one of a dozen
ships; her syren whimpering ‘Let me through! Make way!’; her crew fallen in aft dressed in life-belts ready for her
final plunge, and cheering wildly as it might have been an enthusiastic crowd when the King passes.”

Let us close on that note. We have been compassed about so long and so blindingly by wonders and miracles so
overwhelmed by revelations of the spirit of men in the basest and most high; that we have neither time to keep tally of
these furious days, nor mind to discern upon which hour of them our world’s fate hung.

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